Tony DiDio Movies
Two happily married expectant parents get more than they bargained for after hiring a free-spirited Ukrainian housekeeper to help clean up their suburban palace in Killer Wave director Kevin Connor's playful domestic comedy. Marsha and David McMillan (Cynthia Preston and Larry Dorf) are about to have their first child, yet despite their excitement at the prospect of becoming parents, their home is in a hopeless state of disarray. Realizing that their only hope for tidying up before the big arrival is to hire an experienced housekeeper, Marsha and David agree to give the job to voluptuous Ukranian Sophia Petrenko (Alla Korot). When the infectiously friendly housekeeper begins inviting her relatives from the old country to come experience the good life in America, however, Marsha and David find their home overtaken by strangers just at the time when it should be getting baby-proofed. Mindy Sterling, Howard Hesseman, Richard Riehle, and Roddy Piper co-star. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Larry Dorf, Cynthia Preston, (more)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Tobe Hooper returns to his rightful place behind the camera to weave this gruesome tale concerning an abandoned small-town funeral home with a dark and deadly secret. Local legend has it that the Fowler Funeral Home in Santa Loraina, CA, is plagued with death of the most unnatural kind. Rumored to have been purchased to launch a ranching business by Zeb Fowler, the land was subsequently converted into a funeral home when the cattle all began dying of a mysterious and undiagnosed ailment. When Zeb and his wife gave birth to a hideously disfigured boy named Bobby soon thereafter, the story took a strange turn as the pair attempted to shelter their son by covering his face with a burial shroud. After young Bobby disappeared at the age of eight and his parents were found brutally murdered a decade later, rumors began to swirl around the community that Bobby may still be alive. Now single mother Leslie Doyle (Denise Crosby) has moved into the long-abandoned and hideously decrepit home with aspirations of restoring it and taking on the role of town mortician for the town of Santa Loraina, and, along with her children, Jonathon (Dan Byrd) and Jamie (Stephanie Patton), she is about to discover that some legends never die. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Tobe Hooper, who directed one of the truly iconic American horror films of the 1970s, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, offers his take on another well-remembered scare-fest of the era with this remake. Steve (Brent Roam) and Nell (Angela Bettis) are a young couple living in Los Angeles who are short on money -- she's just started work as a teacher, while he's a medical student doing his internship. They rent a flat in the Lusman Arms, a once beautiful but now decaying (and therefore affordable) apartment building managed by the sleazy Byron McLieb (Greg Travis), who tries to pass off the ramshackle accommodations as "charming" and "historic." Watching over the Lusman Arms beside Byron is Ned (Adam Gierasch), a greasy simpleton who serves as the building's handyman. Steve and Nell haven't been living at the Lusman especially long when she notices that a growing number of young women living in the building have been meeting a violent death, and with some help from good-hearted part-time actor "Jazz" Rooker (Rance Howard), she begins looking into the murders and makes some disturbing discoveries about both the building management and her fellow tenants. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Angela Bettis, Brent Roam, (more)
In this psychological thriller, Sarah (Katie Wright) is a young women from England studying art in San Francisco who has started dating Chris (Allen Cutler), a fellow student. Sarah's next door neighbor is Matthew (Jeff Fahey), a violent lunatic malignly obsessed with Sylvie (Emmanuelle Vaugier), an exotic dancer who moonlights as a model at Sarah's art school. As Matthew begins cutting a bloody swath through the Bay Area in an effort to satisfy his lust for violence, Sarah begins noticing a disturbing connection between her art and the victims of Matthew's crimes; as she sculpts characters that appear in her imagination, identical people fall to a serial killer. The Demon Within (aka The Sculptress) also stars Patrick Bauchau as Professor Giraud, one of Sarah's instructors, and Vivis Colombetti as Madame Cleo, a psychic who sees dire events in her future. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeff Fahey, Patrick Bauchau, (more)
